proceed to
what follows
without pause

Pronounced seh·gway.

The Segue Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) arts organization, created and operated by poet James Sherry, supporting the contemporary avant-garde since 1976. Segue was an instrumental platform for the Language poetry movement, in the late 1970s and early 80s, publishing the influential poetry periodical Roof and distributing the critical newsletter L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.

Jacket 2 commented that Roof magazine “anthologized writing by poets working at the Naropa Institute [and] played a key role in the development of Language poetry. Ten issues were published in New York City between the summers of 1976 and 1979.” Columbia University Libraries noted that the magazine was also "known for documenting the New York School [and] Beat poetry."

The Segue Foundation also operates Roof Books, publishing poetry and criticism since 1979, with nearly 200 titles in print. Roof Books has promoted several generations of experimental poets working in a variety of styles, particularly related to Language poetry, New Narrative, Conceptual writing, Flarf, and ecopoetics, along with many other adjacent tendencies. We've published titles that have become esteemed as classics of experimental literature. Roof Books provides considerable support to writing communities in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Buffalo, Canada, and China. The press is distributed by SPD in Berkeley, California. Our slogan: “The best in language since 1976.”

Segue sponsored Janine Pommy Vega’s Incisions Arts Project that held poetry classes and workshops in various New York State correctional facilities, including Sing Sing, Creedmoor, Rikers, and Bayview from 1982 to 2010. Segue published two anthologies of incarcerated writers. We have also sponsored numerous successful individual artists grants in dance, film, and performance arts.

In 1987, Segue sponsored the renovation of an abandoned city-owned property at 303 East 8th Street into twelve affordable artist live/work co-ops and a 1,200 square-foot performance space, the only successfully completed Manhattan artist housing public/private collaboration of the eighties.

The Segue Reading Series began in 1978 as Readings at Ear Inn, organized at the titular downtown NYC bar by Ted Greenwald and Charles Bernstein and sponsored by the Segue Foundation. The lineup for the very first reading was Michael Lally and John Ashbery. In 1994, the album Live at the Ear Inn was released as the “first audio-anthology of Postmodern Language poetry.” 

Segue is among the longest running and best preserved reading series, with most events archived as publicly available audio or video recordings (see below). Segue is also distinguished as being among the few poetry reading series to pay its performers. 

The series relocated to HERE Cafe in 1998 and then the following Manhattan venues: Double Happiness (98-01), Bowery Poetry Club (02-12), and Zinc Bar (12-19). During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Segue Reading Series partnered with Artists Space and pioneered in digital event planning to continue the readings. The series made its return to live events in 2021 at its new home in Artists Space galleries, where it continues to be a cultural landmark.

The Segue Foundation has been directly supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Vanderbilt Family Foundation, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Speakers Bureau of Film/Video Arts, Meet the Composer, Poets & Writers, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Experimental Television, and Materials for the Arts, as well as other project contributions from many corporations, foundations, and individuals. We are a NYS registered charity and a federal tax-exempt organization under IRS 501(c)(3).

STAFF

James Sherry
founder, editor-in-chief

James Sherry is the author of 15 books of poetry and theory and one of the leading proponents of both Language Writing and Environmental Poetics. His books include Selfie: Poetry, Social Change & Ecological Connection (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), The Rapture (collaborative Zoom play with Mark Wallace, 2021), The Oligarch: Rewriting Machiavelli’s The Prince for Our Time (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), Entangled Bank (Chax, 2016), Oops! Environmental Poetics (BlazeVox, 2013), Four For (Meow, 1995), Our Nuclear Heritage (Sun & Moon Press, 1991), Lazy Sonnets (Potes and Poets Press, 1986), In Case (Sun & Moon Press, 1980), and Part Songs (Awede Press, 1978). His work has been translated into nine languages including the Chinese edition of Selected Language Poems (Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House: Chengdu, 1993), translated by Ziqing Zhang and Huang Yunte. He is the editor of Roof Magazine and Roof Books that has published nearly 200 titles of seminal works of language writing, flarf, conceptual poetry, new narrative and environmental poetry and poetics. He started the Segue Foundation in 1977 that has produced over 10,000 events in New York including the Segue Reading Series. Sherry was born in 1946 and lives in New York City.

Deborah Thomas
publisher, designer

Deborah Thomas was publisher of FAIR (fair.org), the national progressive media watch group for 25 years. The publisher and designer of Grand Street literary journal for ten years, she was art director of Dance Magazine, and worked on a variety of progressive magazines and newsletters, including Seven Days, CounterPunch, and The Nation. Book design work has included titles for Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Verso, Overlook Press, Nation Books, Franklin Square Press, and Roof Books. She has received the Silver and Gold Folio Awards for Direct Mail, and the Computer Press Award for Best Newsletter.

Lonely Christopher
managing director, editor

Lonely Christopher is the author of five books, most recently the poetry collections Death & Disaster Series and In a January Would. He is the founding creative director of Inter Poets Theater, managing director of the Segue Foundation, and an editor for Roof Books. His plays have been presented in Canada, China, and the United States. His film credits include several international shorts and the feature MOM, which he wrote a directed. He lives in Brooklyn. Personal website.

Caleb Beckwith
associate editor

Caleb Beckwith is the author of Political Subject (Roof, 2018) and the chapbook Deep Acting (Adjunct Press, 2020). Caleb studied poetics at Temple University, where he was awarded the Penn–Temple Poetics Fellowship to study with Roof authors Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelmen at the University of Pennsylvania. After dropping out of school, Caleb became an active member of the Bay Area poetry scene from 2015–2022. His poetics emerge from a dialog between east and west coast experimental writings. During his time in Oakland, Caleb co-hosted Sponge, a reading series premised on the idea that work from different traditions makes for the most interesting curation. And he helped publish books as Dogpark Collective from 2018–2022. Caleb now lives in the Hudson Valley and holds a day job in the publishing industry.

Cecilia Stelzer
assistant editor

Cecilia Stelzer is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. She received her B.A. in creative writing from Miami University and her M.A. in creative writing from Eastern Michigan University. She currently works as a community engagement assistant at the Metropolitan Opera Guild. She is an assistant editor at Roof Books and a volunteer at the Poetry Project.

Kate Robinson
designer

Kate Robinson founded the Manifest Reading and Workshop series in Oakland, CA with Francis Lo and Brittany Billmeyer-Tuck from 2011-2014. She also performed with Ivy Johnson as The Third Thing. Their self-titled chapbook was published by The Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs in 2016. Her other publications include Mean Body (Eyelet, 2022) and This Women’s Work (Gauss PDF editions, 2019). With Caleb Beckwith and Turner Canty, she hosted the beloved Sponge Reading Series from 2016-2020. At Mills College, she was a founding member and project director for an artist-run print collective at OMNI Commons from 2014-2016. Kate, Caleb, and Eric Sneathen published books as Dogpark Collective from 2018-2022, with Kate’s designs and art direction. She has been designing Tripwire Journal and their pamphlet series since 2019. Not content to keep her true love, type, as a side hustle, since 2021 Kate has been slinging fonts full-time as senior program manager at Type Network.

Marc Nasdor
website administrator

Marc Nasdor is a poet, DJ, and Segue’s web designer/programmer as well as for literary—Kit Robinson & Anne Tardos—and commercial sites. He was IT director and graphics/web designer for Charles Morrow Productions from 2002-2019. In the 1980s and 1990s he co-produced international literary festivals with The Committee for International Poetry and was Program Director at Poets House and the Gas Station performance space. He has also spent more than 35 years involved with the Hungarian arts and literary scene in the US and in Hungary. His books of poetry are Treni In Partenza (Temblor 7, 1988) and Sonnetailia (Roof Books, 2007). His current manuscript is Insurgentes / Avenues. In addition to his literary activities, Nasdor (a/k/a Poodlecannon) is well known as a world music DJ in New York City. He has also DJ'd in Budapest and Pécs, Nantes, Mexico City and Mérida. He is a native of Baltimore who lived in New York City from 1980-2018, and is now back in Baltimore.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

James Sherry

President, Roof Books Editor

Founder

Joined 1977

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Vice President, Poet

Joined 1977

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of 14 books of poetry, most recently A Treatise on Stars (New Directions, 2020), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Bollingen Prize. Her other works include The Heat Bird (1983), winner of the American Book Award; Empathy (1989), winner of the PEN West Award; Sphericity (1993); Endocrinology (1997), a collaboration with the artist Kiki Smith; Four Year Old Girl (1998), winner of the Western States Book Award; Nest (2003); I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems (2006); and Hello, the Roses (2013). She was born in Beijing.

Deborah Thomas, Treasurer

Roof Books Publisher

Joined 1990

James Nadler

Board Member, Retired Business Executive

Joined 1990

James Nadler is an accomplished entrepreneur/intrapreneur with marketing strategy, implementation and business development skills. He had a 30+ year history in the technology industry working with organizations from new business start-ups to Fortune 100 enterprises. Following his retirement in 2010, he moved from New York City to Berkshire County, Massachusetts and has applied his skills with non-profits focusing on environmental, adaptive, equity and cultural issues. In 2014, he founded Berkshire Prescription Services with a mission to increase access to lower cost ethical pharmaceuticals for American citizens.   

Mac Wellman

Board Member, Poet, Playwright

Joined 2013

Mac Wellman’s recent work includes: The Offending Gesture, directed by Meghan Finn at the Connelly Theater in 2016; Horrocks (and Toutatis Too) Woo World Wu at Emerson College in Boston in 2013 (with Erin Mallon & Tim Sirgusa); Muazzez at the Chocolate Factory (PS122’s COIL Festival) with Steve Mellor, in 2014; 3 2’s; or AFAR at Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair in the fall of 2006 (and elsewhere more recently); and 1965 UU for performer Paul Lazar, and directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008. He has received numerous honors, including NEA, Guggenheim, and Foundation of Contemporary Arts fellowships. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q’s Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008 a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, was published by Trip Street Press as well as a new collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field from Minnesota Press. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006), Split the Stick (2012) from Roof Books, and Left Glove (2011), from Solid Objects Press. His novel Linda Perdido won the 2011 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College.

​ARCHIVAL

The Segue Reading Series

     Videos on Artists Space
Audio on PennSound
Audio on MixCloud

Original fliers for Readings at the Ear Inn

Roof magazine at Jacket2

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E at Eclipse Archive

The James Sherry Papers are in the collection of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University